People Who Ban Books are Never Right

At no point in history have those who seek to restrict knowledge and progress been the “good guys.”

I can’t believe that I have to say this at all, but banning and burning books is, broadly and generally speaking, a bad thing. As in it is never acceptable, like, ever. Why are we even having this discussion?

First off, it’s incredibly ineffectual in the modern age. We have things like Amazon, where we can download a truly incredible number of e-books on a variety of topics, including an absolutely jaw-dropping amount of smut. Do you really think that banning a handful of books about being queer is going to stop kids from getting their grubby little hands on them?

I know parents whose kids can manage to get through whatever parental controls they have established to buy loads of stuff on their parents’ credit cards. Failing that, many teenagers will simply buy things they want with allowance money and hide them from their parents, assuming their parents aren’t supportive and wouldn’t just buy that thing for them anyway.

Barring that, there’s always petty crime, a favorite of teenagers everywhere. An author I follow heard from a librarian that the most stolen books are the ones that kids need to read at that point in their lives. Do you really think that kids who want to find out what is happening with them won’t just steal those books from a bookstore if it came down to it? I’m not a big fan of crime in general, but I am also willing to bet that a bunch of queer authors would rather lose a sale to theft if it means a kid survives high school.

Second, the books that the current crop of banners and burners are targeting are generally focused on queerness and BIPOC rights. Why, you might ask, are they targeting these books? Because, and this is the quiet part that gets said out loud a lot, they view these populations as not equal to white people.

Queerness is sinful according to them, and being BIPOC is to be inherently inferior. The notion that these people can write articulate books that tell the stories of their lives and histories is dangerous to them because their lives and histories have been damaged by white people. They view the knowledge that white people just might have perpetrated crimes against nonwhite, non-straight folks as dangerous.

This is why their poor children must be protected from being traumatized by that knowledge. How dare you let little Keighleigh and little Brantley learn something that might make them feel bad about themselves? It’s almost as though history is full of horrors perpetrated by those in power! You know, things that those people don’t want everyone to find out about!

If you are learning about history and it doesn’t make you feel at least a little bit uncomfortable, you are not learning history, you are reading a sanitized retelling through the lens of the author. Young kids may not be ready for the graphic details of the Holocaust, but they need to learn at least a bit about them so that we do not repeat those mistakes.

And, if you try to pull out a “think of the children” argument, I’d like to point out that children have some level of agency that tends to get overlooked by a lot of adults. Don’t forget, a lot of the people protesting gun violence in the Tennessee legislature were children, and the people who are in favor of burning books about queerness are the same ones who ask what kind of gun the children would prefer to be shot with.

Children are a convenient constituency to argue on behalf of because people tend to think they don’t have valid opinions on account of being minors and whatnot. I hate to tell you, but there are some incredibly articulate children and teenagers who aren’t legal adults yet, and plenty of them are still more articulate than the people who burn books. Maybe, just maybe, it’s because they actually read some of those banned and burned books.

And, if you ask me, children and teenagers should have some input into the books they can read. I think you’ll find that many tweens and teens are plenty mature enough to read books that deal with a variety of topics parents consider “distasteful.” Aside from explicit smut, I feel like there are a whole bunch of banned books that many teenagers would find fascinating.

Finally, and probably most importantly, why do you think that banning and burning books makes you the good guys somehow? Looking back at history, people who burned books are pretty much always viewed through a negative lens as far as I can remember. I have friends who are still salty about the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria if that gives you any hints.

People who burn books are pretty much universally anti-progress, and it is progress that has brought us so many of the technologies that we rely on in the modern age. Why do you want to stop progress? Is it because the black, brown, and queer people are threatening your grip on power? Is that why you continue trying to erase their existence and force them back underground?

You do realize that nobody in the history of the world has ever said “This group is not equal” and been right, right?

Look, I don’t care for books like Mein Kampf, anything by Ayn Rand, and probably any number of other books out there, but I don’t believe that they should be banned and burned. They may be incredibly destructive in terms of their messages, but part of a well-rounded education is reading stuff that you don’t like or agree with.

I loathe Nazis like any and every American should and I strongly disagree with libertarianism, but if you want to read those particular entries in the array of books that exist, go for it. I generally hope that the people who read them do so with the context that they deserve, but that’s not my place to decide. Yes, some people will be radicalized by Mein Kampf, but most of us understand that Nazis are the bad guys.

Look, if you think that burning books somehow makes you “righteous defenders of culture,” you’re just plain wrong. What it all boils down to is that, while you may be able to make decisions for the books that your children and family read, you don’t get to make those decisions for the rest of us.

Banning and burning books to prevent the rest of us from getting to them is idiotic, not least of which because it doesn’t work terribly well thanks to Amazon and the like. There is a whole week dedicated to reading banned books (it’s October 1–7 this year), so loads of people will be buying and reading books that the culture warriors don’t want any of us to read.

And, if you think that kids won’t get their hands on books that you don’t want them to read, you dramatically misunderstand kids. Many of them will hear “You can’t do that” and immediately want to do it, and by the gods they’ll find a way. For those of us who like reading, we’ll probably buy them and encourage our kids to read those books.

When it comes to banning books and fighting progress, I’m afraid that you’re fighting a losing battle. This has been going on for as long as human history and it’s never stopped humanity from moving forward before. Just because you’re afraid of what progress brings doesn’t mean the rest of us are.

Being closed-minded and burning books only makes you look like the bad guys in retrospect, and while you may feel righteous now, history will judge you poorly. You’re better off cutting it out now before the hole you’re digging for yourselves collapses in on you.

Be well and read banned books.

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